Hey basket, meet all my eggs!

Although I've tried to keep my whining to a minimum here, for the past 2 weeks or so, I have been thinking little else besides where my love life is going. It's sick, really. Unlike my southern female counterparts, I have no desire to get married in the near future. Currently, the thought of children and puppies and suburbs equals intellectual death to me. No - that life, if it chooses to exist, will emerge no earlier than the age of 28. I've got at least half a decade before I spend the rest of my life breadwinning for my stay-at-home husband and breeding baby Avanis. And i've decided, to my parents' dissent, that if I choose to go it alone, I will be inseminating my little eggs, preferably with the sperm of an active, attractive, and intelligent gay male (hi Ryan). I mean, I owe it to our world to reproduce. Look at me. These genetics should not be wasted.

Evidently, I'm both horrified and -- yes, I'm embarrassed to admit -- that I am on a nonquest quest for the perfect man. Over the past week, while talking to friends, it occurred to me that I want to be in love in a forever-love kind of way. No more I'm-in-love-with-you guys but-I-have-the-same-emotional-and-developmental-capacity-as-I-did in-7th-grade. I tire of these boys and their inability to grow. It's silly. And selfish. And sad. And a waste of my time. To these boys, I say go have your silly ventures with women of equal silly calibur. I choose men.

Now, I don't want you to fear for me. I am not and never have been the kind of girl who goes looking for love because she's uncontent - "I want a boyfriend. I'm so empty and sad when I'm alone." Waa waa. Cry me a river. I'm not poking fun at these women, only hoping that they realize their own independent capacity to be happy. Yes, I too have had my heart stepped on - ripped out, stomped on, and put into a juicer is more like it. I've cried for love lost and the resulting agony. I still do. But I hope for a better man in the future. He must be intelligent, hilarious, and unbelievably compassionate. He will wrestle with life; he will defend me; he will disagree with his friends, family, and me. And none of it will come between us. Ah yes, i want somebody to love. (Enter unicorns, rainbows, and ewan mcgregor serenades)

"Ah ha!" you say. But love is not so simple, and it's reciprocal. Don't just go looking for love - get it in return. To this I give you a quote -- it's cheesy, but poignant: "I am someone who is looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love." I LOVE that. Love isn't always unicorns and rainbows, it's torture. It's Antony and Cleopatra; it's U2's with or without you; it's ram and sita. It's romantic and sometimes painful and compromising.

I want that. And while I fall into slumps sometimes, blaming myself for not having found it, I know there is nothing more I could have done to turn my boyfriends into introspective, intelligent, confident men. There is only so much handholding a woman can do, and i mean that both literally and figuratively.

So I'm putting all my eggs in the dating basket - destiny needs a little push sometimes. I'm eliminating no one at round one, giving him every opportunity to show me a good time. My current/last boyfriend, whatever he is, had the indecency to just stop calling me so I responded with the same courtesy: I went on a date. Not to find love, but to remind myself that I am capable of it again. And he was smart, charming, inquisitive. Nothing romantic will come of it, but much else did - including a personal feeling of satisfaction in myself, what I have to offer, and how another may be drawn to appreciate it. And that is something I both want and need.